The Last Rose of Summer
by joe6991
Summary: Retired Auror Harry Potter is summoned back to Hogwarts one last time, to solve one last mystery, to cheat death again, and make amends for the sins of the past...


**A/N: **_Quick little one-shot._

* * *

**The Last Rose of Summer**

'_When the first living thing existed, I was there, waiting.'_

~Neil Gaiman

…_I cherished, you perished,  
the world's been nightmarished._

~Lemony Snicket

_So soon may I follow when friendships decay__  
__And from love's shining circle the gems drop away__  
__When true hearts lie withered and fond ones are flown__  
__Oh who would inhabit this bleak world alone?__  
__…This bleak world alone_

~Thomas Moore

Deep within the cascading dungeons of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry Potter knelt down on his haunches, minding the groan in his old knees, and steadied himself against the wall so he could duck his head into the ominous, crumbling hole in the school's foundations. The stench of rot wrinkling his nose up and down the corridor grew stronger, a wave almost nauseating, as if fish had been left to waste in the sun. He angled his wand and splashed an arc of light into the maw of the cave-in. The light revealed a narrow cavern dripping with a thick, purple ichor—_monster blood_—twisting away beneath the castle into depths unknown.

Heavy globules of the ichor dripped like oil, pooling along the length of the cavern and gnawing away at the brick and stone.

Harry hesitated, then dabbed the tip of his wand into the purple ichor. The holly wood _hissed_ and spat like a log in a fire, and the light from his spell failed. Harry drew back and squinted at the end of his wand. The tip was petrified, pock-marked, as if the wood had aged a century or three.

"Hmph," he grunted, and hauled himself up, knees popping with age.

"What do you think, mate?"

Harry turned on the spot and regarded the current headmaster of Hogwarts, Professor Neville Longbottom, and stroked at his close-cut beard—now more grey than black—in thought. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "There are more of these… wounds, in the castle, Nev?"

Neville nodded and crossed his arms over his robes, a casual air of authority about his movement that Harry would never have thought of the first-year boy he'd met all those decades ago. Those decades, both short and long at the same time, had been kind to Neville. He'd aged kinder than Harry at any rate, who had spent fifty years as an Auror and had the scars to prove it. That life was behind him now and belonged to the young and the eager.

"This is the biggest one, and I've closed the affected corridors to the students given that it seems to be nasty stuff, but there's another half-dozen breaches scattered throughout the dungeons. One in the Astronomy Tower, even. Safe to say others we haven't found yet. The walls are caving in down here, and we can't seem to repair it. The rot… resists magical remedies." Neville ran a hand back through his hair. "I'm worried, Harry. You seen anything like the purple muck before?"

Harry considered, then nodded. "Once… half a century or more ago."

Neville held his gaze. "During the war."

"At the start of it, actually."

Neville hesitated, the torches in the brackets against the ancient limestone walls casting his face in worried half-light. "You're troubled. What is it, Harry?"

"Death," Harry said simply. "Do you recall how Voldemort returned to life? How he was resurrected? The cauldron in the graveyard, my blood, his father's bones. When he emerged from that cauldron, the… residue… he left behind was the same stuff that's _eating_ your castle, Headmaster."

* * *

"The castle doesn't feel right," Harry said half an hour later in Dumbledore's—now Neville's—old office. He sipped at a warm dram of scotch peaty enough to have only come from Islay. "Something." He cocked his head, listened, and shrugged. "Something is missing."

Neville nodded and took a seat behind the old mahogany desk, strewn with decades, a life, of magical paraphernalia. The portraits of all the long-dead headmasters watched sleepily from above. The frames and the paint of those men and women looked worn, thin, stretched. "I'm not surprised you feel that. Others have reported the same." Neville gestured to a stack of parchment. "It's as if… there's a sickness at work. The students huddle in groups, none of them walk the halls alone. Merlin, half the staff do the same! It feels like it did back in our second year, you remember?"

"When the whole bloody castle was convinced I was a dark wizard messing with the Chamber of Secrets?" Harry asked wryly.

Neville grinned and waved in an 'as you say' way.

Harry snorted and then frowned. "This feels deeper than that."

"Yes."

"What are you going to do?"

Neville raised his eyebrows in mock-surprise. "Me? Don't be silly. I hear Harry Potter, defeater of Dark Lords and the Ministry's most decorated Auror, is freelancing these days."

Harry held his gaze and said nothing.

Neville sighed. "The Board of Governors will convene here in the morning to discuss a course of action. They'll bring the Curse-Breakers and the magical malady experts, but I think you and I both know this needs some old school exploring in the dark hours after midnight, hunting basilisks or horcruxes or whatever the hell you did to avoid your Potions essays."

"You sound like a teacher, Professor."

Neville folded his hands in his lap. "You'll help then? I can pay you in house points. Help cover your board in Hogsmeade, where I hear you've taken up residence this last year."

Harry considered, then nodded once. "I've taken rooms in Hogsmeade, yes. And I need to get back there, actually—on one of those freelancing matters, unrelated to your troubles. What time do the governors meet?"

"Ten in the morning." He paused. "How worried should I be here, Harry?"

Harry considered the question, shook his head slowly, then stood and offered Neville his hand. The Headmaster of Hogwarts shook it.

* * *

Once across the threshold of the vine-strangled school gates, Harry disapparated and appeared in his rooms at The Three Broomsticks. He took to the washroom and splashed his face in the basin, feeling out of sorts, sullied and dirtied, by his time at Hogwarts. Something was more than amiss at the castle. Leaving the old school had been like shrugging off a heavy weight, like leaving a hospital room of someone terminally ill. He stood a little taller.

Harry ran a comb through his beard and dried his face with a towel. The wearied man looking back at him in the mirror, grey beard cut neat against a hard face lined with wrinkles, eyes dulled jade over the years, a nose broken one too many times to ever sit straight, and the never-fading jagged scar on his forehead, seemed to always be frowning these days.

Harry took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He was due down in the bar area five minutes ago. He took the back stairs, winding around the kitchens, dodged a few house elves, and entered the warm, intimate side-bar, the Wisely Room, a space of comfortable booths with leather seats framing ale-stained and wand-scorched wooden tables, burdened with spellbooks. A fire crackled quite merrily in the hearth, and a bubbling cauldron of something that may have been mulled wine, the scent of cinnamon and cloves on the air, hung above the orange logs.

In the corner booth, masked in dim light, sat Luna Lovegood-Scamander.

Harry eased himself into the booth and Luna reached across the table to take his hand. He blinked, met her eyes, and then turned his hand belly-up. Luna ran her fingers along his calloused palm.

"You've been up to mischief of late, Harry Potter," she said, not unkindly. "Something reckless."

Luna's long mane of dirty-blonde hair had faded more toward straw-grey in the five years since Harry had seen her last. At the funeral of her late husband, Rolf Scamander. He hadn't stayed long into the wake, just long enough to be polite. He held her gaze, her pale-silvery eyes, and then squeezed her fingers before letting her hand go.

"It's nice to see you too, Luna," he said.

Outside, a biting winter's breeze carried a flurry of snow against the old public house, rattling the panes in their windows. The log fire pushed back against the cold and the dark, but for all winter's howling Harry and Luna could have been the last two people on earth in that moment. In the next, the bartender brought them both a mug of butterbeer, a splash of rum in each, and the world fell back into place, time started ticking again.

"Is it nice?" Luna said. "To see me?"

Harry took a sip of his drink, warming his bones. "I'm sorry I haven't been in touch these last few years. Time gets away, you know."

"Yes, I know. Rumour even has it that Harry Potter has been living above a bar as if he's still twenty years old and wondering what to do with all his errant time."

"How are your boys? Lorcan and…" He frowned.

"Lysander. They're well. Off travelling the world, living above bars, and looking to make their mark. How are James, Albus, and Lily?"

Harry grunted. "I saw Lily at Christmas. And she writes every week. The boys spent the holidays at their mother's." Harry spun a missing ring on his left hand with his thumb. The band of pale skin revealed in the ring's absence had long since disappeared. "They're well. Eager to steer clear of my shadow. Of me in general, really."

A comfortable silence fell between Harry and Luna, as only it can fall between old friends, which allowed for all the words better left unsaid to pass between them without any fuss.

"This wasn't a social call," Harry said after a minute.

Luna quirked her brow. "Last I saw Ginny, she said you were all business. Can it not be both?"

Harry pondered the answer to that somewhere within the depths of his creamy butterbeer. "Have you been up to the castle lately? Neville's got some troubles."

"Yes." She frowned and rubbed her arms, hugging herself. "I can feel it from here. Something is quite amiss at Hogwarts. Are you going to save the day?"

"I'm going to try."

"Recklessly?"

"Oh, is there another way?"

Luna chuckled. "Which is why I wanted to see you tonight."

Harry knew she expected him to reply, but he held his tongue, and her eyes. Long interrogations, countless nights in the Ministry, had taught him that people inevitably filled the silence. Luna was working her way toward something, something important. He would let her get to whatever she had to say in her own way.

"I need you to save me, Harry," she said softly. "Surely that's easier than saving a whole day."

"Luna," Harry said, worried, "what's gone wrong?"

Luna smiled the sort of smile reserved for those who understood just how unfairly the world turned. She untied the knot of the woollen pink scarf around her neck, revealing smooth, pale skin… and harsh dark lines, black as night, like shatter on glass, crawling up her neck from beneath her blouse.

Harry whistled between his teeth and leaned back against the booth.

Luna blinked, her eyes shiny with unspent tears, sparkling against the firelight, and knotted her scarf back around her neck.

The silence this time was deafening.

"How…" Harry began slowly. "Luna, oh Luna, how far along is it?"

"Oh, quite far," she said airily, with a hint of the grace and fairy magic she had once used as a buffer against the bullies of Hogwarts.

"Shit," Harry cursed. "I'm sorry. It's just… shit." He paused. "Do your boys know?"

She shook her head. "Only you, and one or two of the Healers at St. Mungo's, of course."

Harry sighed. "Mage's Ruin." _The wasting sickness._ "Luna, I'm so sorry."

She waved his concern away. "I must say, you are not putting me at any sort of ease, Harry Potter."

Harry frowned, then he blinked. "You said you wanted me to save you."

"From my magical cancer? Yes, Harry, I do."

As delicately as he could, Harry placed his stein of butterbeer on the table and took Luna's hands between his own. She didn't pull away. "Luna, dear, you must know… there is no cure. Using magic on you would only hasten the sickness—"

Luna scowled and tore her hands from Harry's. "Yes, you sound like the healers. The disease will spread all the quicker, exacerbated by magical remedy, and eat everything inside of me that is good to eat until there's nothing left but rot and disease." She squinted at him. "What's happened to you? A few years without an Auror's badge and you've… you've _wearied_. Harry, you're wearier than I, and I'm the one dying."

Harry hunched his shoulders closer together. "I'm not sure what you want of me. Or expect."

"Expect? I expect you to do as you've always done," Luna said briskly. "And what I want is the boy, then the man, who has survived far more impossible things than he has any right to… I just hoped that, in all your years, Harry. The times you died, or should have, that perhaps you know something, some deeper magic, that could help me."

"I—"

"You consult these days, I know," Luna said. "Word is, you've delved the farthest depths of the Department of Mysteries. An Unspeakable in all but name. I am certain your fees are quite reasonable."

"Luna, I wouldn't ever charge—"

She reached into her purse and retrieved a crumpled brown paper bag. "I trust this will cover your expenses."

Harry opened his mouth, closed it again, and took the small paper bag. The scent of citrus hit his nose as he unfurled the lip. He smiled softly. "Lemon drops."

"A whole sickle's worth."

"Far more than I deserve." Harry put the bag aside and stroked his beard. "Cure an incurable disease that has claimed more wizards and witches than any Dark Lord? Are you sure you wouldn't like me to do something harder, given the vast bounty of hard sweets on offer?"

Luna found her smile and shook her head once. A wayward lock of her hair fell loose from behind her ear and settled across her eye.

"Anything else at all?"

Luna once again took his hand across the table. "I'd like you to take me upstairs."

Harry considered, then nodded.

* * *

His aches and pains bothering him a damn sight less than yesterday, Harry took the rotating staircase up to the headmaster's office just after ten the next morning. He arrived in the ornate, timeworn space to find Neville fighting alone against the four key members of the Board of Governors.

"Ah," said Amos Diggory, one hundred and eleven years old and counting, his gnarled hands clutching a thin glass cane that concealed his wand. "Potter, is it?" He mumbled into his beard. "Is that Harry Potter?" he yelled at the tall, thin man next to him.

Draco Malfoy, resplendent in a wool suit of the finest, latest cut, a silver-clasped cloak swept across his shoulders below his trademark slick-backed hair, nodded. Age seemed to have touched the heir of Malfoy Manor not at all. "Yes, Amos. Potter, good morning."

"Chairman Malfoy," Harry said. "And to the rest of you." He took his place on Neville's side of the desk, leaning against the pillar where Fawkes' perch had once rested in what felt like several lifetimes ago. He folded his arms across his chest.

"As we were discussing, Headmaster," Charmaine Floreaux said, the youngest member of the board and firmly in Malfoy's pocket. Which is to say, possessed of Pureblood loyalty, however much they claimed such loyalty to be about tradition these days and mending the prejudices of the past. "The Curse-Breakers' report is far from encouraging. Whatever affliction the castle is suffering, it can be sourced directly to the fluctuations in the wards."

"The collapse of the west dungeon beneath the Great Lake," Percy Weasley said. He offered Harry a small nod, distant and guarded, no doubt mindful that he and Ginny were not strictly on speaking terms. "We're lucky no students were in those old classrooms. Should the rot continue, I think we can expect other, populated parts of the castle, to succumb. A matter of days, perhaps."

"Magic holds this wonderful school together," Charmaine said. "Without the magic, well…" She raised her hand and let it fall across her body, like a ship being swept away by the sea in storm.

"Following the ward fluctuations, the Curse-Breakers were able to narrow the source of this malady to some depth below the heart of the castle." Percy glanced at Malfoy, then to Harry. "Beneath the Chamber of Secrets."

Neville spared Harry a glance. Harry shook his head.

"The wards have tied themselves in knots down there," Percy continued, "and formed a sort of shield, a barrier. It glimmers golden, I'm told. Beyond the barrier is a set of stairs not noted on the previous mappings of Slytherin's old chamber. It's new, I'd say, or at least revealed from old—and entirely inaccessible. The diagnostic spells have shown that it may as well be a death line. Crossing the barrier would scramble anyone's eggs."

"Any idea where it leads?" Neville asked.

"To the very foundations of this old castle!" Amos Diggory cackled and rocked back and forth in his chair. "Built on all the bones this dark house has claimed over the years!" Malfoy steadied the old man and offered him a plate of assorted biscuits, which seemed to calm him down.

"Perhaps," Draco Malfoy said, near-scoffed, "the man who held the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Cloak of Invisibility can breach this barrier. Perhaps the Master of Death, the Boy Who Lived, can save the castle."

Harry offered Malfoy his middle finger. The boy he had once gutted with one of Severus Snape's unlicensed spells in a second-floor bathroom smirked.

"Would that work?" Neville asked, eyeing everyone in the office and Harry last. "Harry?"

Harry shrugged. "Odd that the wards would bend so inconveniently against us," he mused. "This reeks of design. Of 'on purpose'."

Malfoy opened his mouth to say something smart, then seemed to think better of it. He inclined his head. "As you say. But whose design?"

"Anyone been in the Chamber of Secrets since we let the Unspeakables do their survey all those years back?" Harry asked Neville.

"No—Minerva, may she rest in peace, had them install alarms, enchantments, keyed to this office. Apart from the Curse-Breakers this morning, no one has been down in that hole for forty years."

"If that's so," Percy said, "then whatever magic is at work is perhaps as old as the castle itself."

As much as he didn't want to, Harry agreed. "Someone's going to get hurt before this one is over."

Amos grunted, eyed Harry sideways, and chose to say nothing. What wasn't said rang as loud as church bells on Sunday.

"So, to the heart of the matter," Malfoy said. "Do we close the school until this is resolved?"

Neville reluctantly nodded. "We can't in good conscience continue the term if the Astronomy Tower, or worse, could come crashing down at any moment. Agreed?"

The board members in the room nodded solemnly. Harry chuckled.

"Something funny, Potter?" Malfoy asked.

Harry shook his head and waved him away. "I was just thinking. Dumbledore would have voted to keep this old place open even if the vote were on the Astronomy Tower as it _was_ falling."

"Yes, well, the man was mad." Malfoy pulled his cloak closer around his shoulders. "Never mind the war, I'm surprised any of us escaped our schooling alive."

Harry glanced up at Dumbledore's portrait, at the old man snoozing away the years, the paint faded, the frame cracked. _Time_, he thought. _Never enough time_. "A lot of us didn't," he said softly.

* * *

Later that day, Harry sat across from the Minister for Magic and sipped from a warm cup of peppermint tea that, even before sundown, he wished was something a shade stronger.

The tall windows in the Minister's office, deep beneath London, looked out on a fine view of Mont Blanc, the impressive green forests and rivers below the highest snow-capped peak in the Alps, straddling France, Italy, and Switzerland respectively, clear under blue skies. Harry had always liked that background—though he knew it was because the remoteness appealed to the small part of him that wanted to run away and hide from the world.

"How is the tea, Harry?"

"Fine, Minister," he said.

The Minister for Magic frowned at him and _tsk_ed. "Must you insist on that?"

"Sorry, Minister."

Hermione stamped her foot. "Honestly. It's like you never grew up!"

Harry gazed past his old friend and out at the commanding, magical view of the Alps. "We all did far too much of that." He placed the teacup in its saucer and then onto Hermione's desk. "We're not quite old yet, by wizarding standards, but we've started to hit the part of the game where life takes more than it gives."

He was, of course, thinking of Luna.

Hermione rolled her eyes, perhaps unkindly. "I won't have you sulking in my office." She leaned forward in her leather chair. "Have you spoken to Ginny recently?"

"No, but you know that."

"Yes, all the same—"

Harry held up his hand. "Peace, Hermione. I came to see the Minister on Ministry business, not my friend on well-meaning-but-misguided sticky-beak business."

"I am _not_ a sticky-beak." Hermione bit her tongue and calmed her face. "How do you still manage to do that after all these years? Make me feel like we're in trouble again for sneaking around after dark?" She took a moment. "How can the Ministry help you today?"

Harry pressed his fingers together. "Have you been briefed on the situation at Hogwarts?"

"Yes, partly. I'm meeting with the some of the governors this afternoon. I still detest Draco Malfoy, but he is not his father, and he chairs that board efficiently and turns a tidy profit doing so. I understand Neville brought you in as a consultant."

"Yeah, he did."

"Well, then if nothing else, the situation is in good hands."

Harry smiled. "Thank you for saying that."

"I mean it, of course," Hermione replied, her frizzy hair bound tight in a no-nonsense ponytail and bobbing as she nodded the once. "What do you need from me?"

Harry let the moment linger before he placed a hand on her desk. "I need my DOM credential reinstated, just for the next few days."

Hermione raised a single eyebrow. "Hmm, that's no small thing."

Harry scratched behind his ear and shrugged. "I'm certain I've read about something like what's happening at Hogwarts before. I'm sure you'd recall it instantly. It's on the tip of my tongue, floating in the back of my mind. I need access to the Archives."

"You left that life, Harry," Hermione said, "and its privileges behind."

"I know. I'd sooner leave it left behind, and were this not urgent I'd submit a formal request to the Unspeakables, but I don't have that kind of time. I think Hogwarts is in quite a bit of trouble."

Hermione frowned at him. "Is there anything else you're not telling me?"

Harry fought the urge to place the innocent-but-screaming-guilty look on his face that Hermione had seen through as early as their second-year. He wouldn't betray Luna's trust, not for anyone.

"I'm certain there isn't," he said, lying to one friend for another.

Hermione contemplated that for a long moment and then retrieved a sheaf of square parchment slips from her top desk drawer. She hastily filled in the blanks, sealed the credential with the Office of the Minister's sigil, and cast a quick-dry charm on the ink.

"Temporary access," she said. "In and out, Harry Potter."

"Yes, Minister."

* * *

The Department of Mysteries had, if anything, in the sixty or so years since Harry and his friends had wreaked merry-hell through its corridors, shattering prophecies and Death Eater bones alike, become even more intricate and forbidding.

His credential got him through the door, but his name and his history earned him the nods of respect from the cloaked and hooded Unspeakables that roamed the matte-black corridors like silent wraiths, off on work unsolved, unknown, unspoken. Harry wound his way down through the twisting complex, designed to obfuscate intruders, to turn back on itself to those not blooded in its ways. He strolled past the Hall of Prophecy, offering a small curse, spent a moment on the balconies surrounding the veil that had claimed Sirius Black, and headed deeper into the chambers and vaults of the most magically dangerous place on the planet.

Far below even the Hollow of the Veil, as it was dramatically known, Harry set foot in the Archives. A vast space, more akin to a warehouse than a library, stacked floor to ceiling with magical items, cursed objects, forgotten mysteries, and more than one or two oddities that defied all definition.

He made his way through the neat and orderly stacks, the scent of cold, clinical bleach on the air—ammonia, like in a Muggle hospital—that made him think of sickness and death. In the heart of the Archives rose a two-storey cottage, something that would not have been out of place on the banks of a softly flowing river in the Forest of Dean, surrounded by trees, a patch of tilled earth, and mighty Welsh hills.

A gentle curl of smoke rose from the charmingly leaning chimney atop of the thatched roof, and warm light shone from the windows behind misaligned wooden shutters. Stepping through the gate, Harry approached the threshold and knocked once, twice, three times on the rustic white door of the cottage.

Shuffling inside let him know someone was home, and there was only ever one someone in this home.

A heavy latch unbolted from inside and the door swung open to reveal a small, pale man, dressed in a simple blue robe. He wore golden-rimmed spectacles on his lined face beneath a ring of white, fluffy hair that buried his ears.

The Caretaker took one look at Harry and made to slam the door.

Harry didn't try and stop him, didn't flinch. The door slammed shut in his face.

From inside the cottage, Harry heard mumblings, cursing, and then half a minute later the door flung open again and the Caretaker pointed a crooked finger in Harry's face.

"You most _certainly_ cheated!" the Caretaker exclaimed.

"Did not," Harry replied.

"Yes, you did!" The Caretaker bared his teeth. "I've never lost to one of you muckity-muck Aurors before. You wand-happy grunts! Bah!"

"Elias, I—"

"No, I won't hear it—I demand a rematch!"

Harry considered, then nodded. "I'm on time sensitive business today, old man, but meet me at the Dragon's Breath in Godric's Hollow this weekend, and we'll play. Lunch is on the loser."

Elias the Caretaker, the wizard-supreme of the Archives, relaxed. "I'll bring my board and pieces, of course. Industry standard, finest grain." He glared. "Impossible to tamper with."

He stepped back from the threshold of his cottage and gestured Harry through the door.

Candles floated overhead, a good dozen or so, casting the room in friendly if dim light. All the light the last few days had seemed dim to Harry, as if the world were fading around him. Harry chalked that up more to his glum mood than any enchantment or magical malady.

The cottage was as cosy inside as the outside had promised. Vast shelves lined with hundreds of books painted the walls, a cauldron bubbled quite happily in the fireplace, horseshoed by leather sofas and fine, woven rugs from a more decent time. An old oak table held the centrepiece of the room, a large hourglass of pouring diamonds. The diamonds poured _up_ from the bottom of the glass into the reservoir at the top. A gentle flow of bottled time moving backwards.

The function of the baroque hourglass was unknown, though the Caretaker had a theory it had been used in the making of time-turners long ago.

"Cup of tea?" the Caretaker asked, and eyed Harry askance. "Perhaps something a touch more… warming. You have the look of dark work about you, lad."

Harry took a seat at the old oak table, staring at the diamonds in the hourglass, each one caught with candlelight and sparkling. Some days what he wouldn't give to be able to reset the clock, to avoid some of the pitfalls and the wastelands. The Caretaker made a bottle of something amber and aged appear as if by magic and filled two tumblers.

He took the chair next to Harry and they raised their glasses.

"To your health," Harry said.

"To a game well played," the Caretaker replied, and dropped Harry a wink.

Harry hid his grin behind a generous gulp of whisky.

The old men knocked back their drinks and placed the tumblers rim-side down on the table, to catch spirits, or so it was said.

"Mage's Ruin," Harry said abruptly, as the drink settled warm in his stomach.

The Caretaker cursed. "I'm sorry, lad."

"Not me. And I don't want sorry, Caretaker, I want a solution."

The Caretaker laughed, but there was no humour in it, just bitterness. "You jest, of course."

Harry shook his head.

With a frown, the Caretaker stood and paced back and forth in front of the light of the fire, his shadow dancing across Harry and the walls, bending around the pools of floating candlelight. "You think if there were anything in my archives that could safely cure that disease, I wouldn't have hotfooted it across to St. Mungo's long ago for a chest of galleons and a blowjob from half the nursing staff?"

Harry enjoyed that mental image for a moment and then pointed a finger at the Caretaker. "Safely cure?"

"Oh, I could give you a cure. I could give you a cure right this minute. In fact, you already know it."

"I do?"

The Caretaker nodded vigorously, rocking on the spot. "You do, lad, yes indeed. Here's the recipe: seven parts murder, seven parts split soul, poured in equal measure into a cursed object, allow to rest for fourteen years, then bake in a blood, bone, and flesh oven overnight and serve cold."

Harry blinked.

The Caretaker stared at him until he got it. He sighed. "Tom Riddle was always rumoured to have the wasting sickness. Sickly and pale during his time at Hogwarts. Half the reason he pursued immortality so fiercely, so... remorselessly."

Harry swore and slammed his fist into his palm. "There's got to be another way. A bloody horcrux is no cure at all, Elias."

"Aye, lad, I agree." He sat back down and poured two fresh tumblers of liquid gold, a double pour, far too generous. "You are the only known survivor of the Avada Kedavra, and Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort that was, is the only ill-known survivor of Mage's Ruin."

Harry thought back across the years, through all the death and pain of the war, and sipped at generous.

"Prophecy bound you as mirrors of one another in more ways than one," the Caretaker mused, watching Harry's face. "I know that look, Potter. That's your devil-may-care and Dark-Lords-can-go-to-hell look. I'm telling you, sincerely, to just make whoever has got the ruin as comfortable as possible. You mess with this one, you're liable to breach some fairly dark magic."

Harry ruminated on that for a long minute, thinking of Luna, and her kind fairy heart. The Caretaker busied himself with his drink, allowing Harry the time.

"Other business then." Harry cleared his throat. "Hogwarts castle is in all sorts of trouble—a rot of its own." He frowned, thinking of mirrors. "Similar to Mage's Ruin, actually."

The Caretaker looked up from his glass, his interest piqued. "Oh?"

Harry explained the porous caverns of purple ichor spreading throughout the castle, eating away at the stone, and getting worse, as well as the report from the Curse-Breakers that the malady had twisted the wards into a shield over an unexplored part of the castle depths.

The Caretaker grunted. "Not natural then. Someone, or something, planned this."

"My thoughts, too. Any solutions?"

The Caretaker stood and grabbed his heavy leather coat from the hooks near the small kitchen. "This is deep archive business," he said. "Wand at the ready, Potter."

* * *

The Caretaker led Harry from the cottage along a narrow, curving path of dusty cobblestone. Unlike the rest of the Department of Mysteries, with the silver and black tile aesthetic, this part of the department was old—older than old. Some scholars, the Caretaker amongst them, claimed it had been here not just before the Ministry, but before London itself. A relic of youthful Rome.

The cobblestone lane led downwards, further below the Ministry above, and the neat, orderly stacks before the cottage turned into looming, crooked towers, turned into dark and bent buildings of some unimaginably ruined city.

However, the Caretaker had spent a life navigating the alleyways and roads, the nooks and crannies of the Archives, and he moved at a steady pace, consulting the unerring map in his head. Harry followed at his heels, knowing full well he could get lost down here and spend days trying to find his way back—if a way back could be found at all. The stacks and tall towers groaned like metal on slate as they shifted and changed position behind him.

In his time as an Auror, and then as an unofficial Unspeakable, a Ministry spook, Harry had only ever been this far into the Archives on a handful of occasions. He gripped his wand tight, palm sweaty, and thought of Luna.

"How deep are we going? Harry whispered, the air cool against his face. The smell of vanilla, long grass, like old books, permeated the air.

"About as deep as we can," the Caretaker replied. "So long as we don't run into anything nasty, we'll be about twenty minutes in getting there."

Harry nodded. On they went.

The narrow stacks and towers of ancient and forgotten magical artefacts, cursed items, strange and consuming glowing baubles, akin to prophecy spheres, twisted and turned ever deeper beneath London.

At his steady pace, Harry didn't have much chance to examine anything in detail, however the glimpses of some of the things he saw would no doubt be added to his catalogue of unique nightmares. He saw a great shelf of massive crystal-glass flasks, rotund and filled with a translucent yellow liquid. Laughing and floating human heads, eyes spinning madly in their sockets, swam within the flasks. Skin pale, deathly, but not yet rotted. Ragged strips of flesh hung from the necks, where the heads had been parted from their bodies however many centuries ago. The mouths of the heads, both men and women, some children, moved soundlessly in what could have been polite conversation, though Harry suspected if the heads could be removed from their flasks, he would hear screams.

Further down, great pyramids the size of a man and somewhat Lovecraftian in nature, dripped sea-scented muck. The angles of the pyramids defied natural law, bent the eye, and Harry wagered he could spend a lifetime staring at the row of abominations and not follow all the edges and angles to the same end twice. Staring at the pyramids, he felt grey, probing fingers crawling across his mind, as if he were being examined, as if he were a piece of fish at market to be considered and discarded.

"Here," the Caretaker said, and offered him a vial of light blue potion. "For the headache." The Caretaker downed one himself.

The headache hit Harry just as they left the pyramids behind, like a railroad spike driven into his skull. He winced, popped the cork, and drained the vial in one gulp. His headache abated.

Sensory torches on the brackets of the stacks flared to life as the light from the main section of the Archives failed to penetrate this deep. Orange flares of light, flickering almost maliciously to Harry, guided their path. He and the Caretaker passed a mausoleum of obsidian-black stone, two storeys high. Between the pillars and within the depths of that death house, ghostly figures hovered and stared at them silently, accusatory, with rivulets of blood flowing from their eyes.

The figures were men and women, and unlike any ghosts Harry had ever seen. Their colour was a swamp-green, somehow malignant, and a sickly yellow-blue fire burned on their skins, like alcohol set to flame. He hesitated, feeling drawn, and took a step off the path toward the—

The Caretaker grasped his arm. "Nothing for you that way, lad. Nothing anyone can do for those poor souls."

"What… what are they?" Harry asked, his voice a rasp. He'd been snared in a brief enchantment.

"Dead," the Caretaker said simply. "And unlike the imprints you have floating around somewhere like Hogwarts, those are real. Spirits, true souls, unable to move on to… wherever. Trapped forever by some necromancy we've never understood and, honestly, I hope we never _do_ understand."

Harry clenched his fists. "How did this happen?"

"Before civilisation, before Hogwarts and Ministries, the Dark Ages were… abhorrent. I can't think of a word to describe such fucked up cruelty," the Caretaker said. "Entire Muggle villages the playthings of wizards and witches that would give even old Voldemort pause." He sighed. "Come on, we're just round the next bend."

Wanting to do something for the trapped souls, but unable to even fathom what that could be, Harry moved on. He and the Caretaker descended a small set of stone steps, and entered a larger space, a glade-like clearing bordered by the myriad of horrors contained in the stacks of the Archives.

In the centre of the glade was a wide, deep pit, emitting a soft pulse of ugly light. Harry and the Caretaker stepped to its edge, and Harry held his sleeve against his nose. The pit was a pool, and full of the bubbling purple ichor that was eating Hogwarts.

Harry grimaced and beheld the gallons upon gallons of what could only be described as malignancy, simmering away softly, almost at a boil. Within the purple mess bobbed large eggs, each about the size of a bludger, as smooth as polished glass.

On the edge of the pool, encased in glass display, rested an ancient tome—a thick, heavy grimoire as old as the hills. The pages appeared to be more dust than parchment. Harry scanned the cover, but the runes and symbols were utterly alien to him.

"Well, that's the stuff at Hogwarts, yeah. What are the dull… orbs? Spheres? The things that look like massive eggs. Do you know, Elias?"

The Caretaker shrugged and stroked at his chin. "Only speculation, pieces of lore here and there. Whatever they are—or were, I should say, as you can see they've long since died—they were considered to be immensely powerful seeds."

"Seeds?" Harry glanced sideways at the Caretaker. "Seeds of magic?"

"No…" he said carefully and tapped the glass case containing the ancient tome. "As best we can tell from this old thing, the nearest translation would be 'Seeds of Life'."

"Of life," Harry repeated. "Well, that's not all that helpful."

"We think the purple soup there is a by-product of the seeds dying. Like when a body putrefies, you see," the Caretaker said. "I'm not sure what you hoped to find down here."

Harry threw up his arms. "Some sort of super magical cure-all, I suppose."

"For Hogwarts? For whoever of your nearest has Mage's Ruin?"

Harry bit off a cutting remark. His shoulders slumped. "Seeds of Life…"

"We're in the oldest part of the Archives here, Potter. And as best we can map, when the stacks don't move around of their own accord, at the _heart _of the Archives." He gestured to the menacing pool. "What you see here was the first thing here. The rest—the stacks, the Ministry, London itself—was built around this pool."

Harry considered that, then sighed. "Good grief."

"Indeed."

Harry considered further. "Why is Hogwarts being destroyed by this stuff, and not the Ministry, not London herself? How is it this pool hasn't spread through the Archives—"

"It doesn't dare," the Caretaker said. "The Archives, Potter, as horrible as they are, keep what's eating Hogwarts contained in this pool. A harsh, ugly balance." He spat into the purple ichor. "It's biding its time."

* * *

Cold and cruel winter clutched Hogsmeade within its icy grasp, but Harry walked the streets that evening, toward sunset, embracing the snap-frozen air and breathing in deeply. His time beneath the Ministry had left him feeling… infected. Being out under the sun, even winter's sun, would cure that. His boots crunched fresh snow in the charming streets, and he nodded to people that recognised him and, even decades on, still wanted to shake his hand for putting an end to that bothersome Dark Lord business.

Harry meandered the streets, his breath caught in his beard becoming small crystals of ice, and knew he was avoiding what he had to do next. So in a long, lazy stride up and down the lanes of Hogsmeade, he made his way once more to his home for the best part of the last year. He made his way to The Three Broomsticks.

Luna Lovegood-Scamander was waiting for him, their tome-strewn booth in the corner, and Harry wasn't surprised to see two fresh and warm butterbeer rums, as if she'd known to the exact minute when he would arrive. He bent to kiss her cheek, a remnant of the night last, before sitting down next to her, not across. He settled his hand on her leg and she settled her hand nicely atop of his.

Harry took a sip of his butterbeer.

"You've been somewhere distasteful today," Luna said, not making it a question.

"Yes."

"For me."

"For you."

She waited a moment. Made it a question. "Am I to be cured?"

Harry met her eyes. "Would you like to go on an adventure with me this evening, Luna?"

She smiled. "Oh? How many times have you asked a girl that, Harry Potter?"

Harry had good grace enough to blush.

"Where shall we be adventuring?"

"Hogwarts. Like old times."

"Will there be puzzles to solve, trolls to defeat, sinister plots and uncertain loyalties?" She patted his hand to show she was teasing. "Lost magical relics, perhaps, or terrifying beasts dormant for a thousand years?"

"I'm sure there'll be some if not most of that, yes."

Luna laughed, throwing her head back, exposing her neck and the dark, blood-rot lines strangling her throat. Mage's Ruin. "What are we waiting for?"

Harry frowned most severely. "To finish our drinks, of course."\

* * *

Headmaster Neville Longbottom worked his wand in slow circles over the concealed entrance to the bathroom, made to look like just another part of the limestone wall, that hid the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. Long years ago, the bathroom had been sealed up, less an errant student with the ability to talk to snakes accidentally happen upon the old chamber that lay below.

Harry and Luna stood behind Neville as he worked, muttering his incantations, and the wall rippled, still water cast with a stone, and the faded wooden door appeared.

"There you are," Neville said. "Sealed for decades and now revealed twice in two days."

Harry glanced down the corridor toward the moving staircases that led up through the centre of the castle. Sizzling drops of purple ichor ran in rivulets from cracks in the ceiling, devouring stone and tapestries alike. Similar veins of decay had spread rapidly throughout the other buildings and towers. Half the dungeons had collapsed in a day. From the outside, great pock-marks in the stone like ruptured pimples marred the castle's façade. Saving Hogwarts was tonight or never.

"Do you have any clue under heaven or earth what you're going to do, Harry?" the headmaster asked. "Merlin, I think you're already too late."

"I find it best not to overthink these situations."

Neville chuckled, though there was little humour in it. "Well, it's got you this far." He made to enter the bathroom.

"Just Luna and me tonight, Nev," Harry said. "Without overthinking it, this is a two-person job."

Neville frowned. "Now just wait a minute—"

Luna stepped up to him and placed a gentle _shoosh_ing finger on his lips. "I had such a crush on you as a girl, Neville. Did you know that?"

Neville blinked. "I… er… Luna, that's, well that is to say, very nice of you."

"Oh, you charmer." Harry laughed.

Luna looked at Harry. Harry shut up.

"You've trusted Harry this far," she said to Neville, and they all knew she wasn't just talking about the last few days, "trust him a little further."

Neville took a deep breath and, after a moment, clapped them both on the shoulder. "I'll just toddle off then, do some headmaster stuff, I guess."

"Neville," Harry said, as he began to walk away. Neville glanced over his shoulder. "If we're not back by dawn—"

"I know, I know, you're likely dead. I hope the reception after the state funeral has those little cocktail sausages on sticks."

Harry laughed. "No, if we're not back by dawn, come save us, you prick."

Neville grinned. "Luna, look after him."

Luna took Harry's hand. "Yes, I suppose I will."

They watched Neville leave, disappearing down one of the secret corridors that, from a half-century old memory, led toward his office. Harry and Luna entered the bathroom, pale moonlight shining in through the high windows, casting the dusty stalls and porcelain sinks in silver. There was no sign of poor Myrtle Warren. Perhaps her lingering imprint on the world had faded.

A touch of mimicked Parseltongue got the long-standing sink to move and the path down to the chamber was revealed. The mouldy stink of damp rose from the hole in the floor. Harry recalled sliding down in the wet and muck all those years ago with Lockhart and Ron. The memory was almost a fond one.

This time, he and Luna used sticking charms on their shoes, avoiding the slip-sliding fun. Thus died the last scrap of their childhood, clutched in the death-grip of adult sensibility.

Hand in hand with Luna, Harry navigated the tunnels and found the Chamber of Secrets standing open in an air of total abandonment. The eerie green-gloom had dimmed, and a good three inches of water sloshed around their ankles. Flood waters on the rise. The air stank of rot, of mildew and decay.

"From the Curse-Breakers' report, we should expect to find a shielded staircase somewhere nearby," Harry said. "Something of old Salazar's perhaps, or maybe not. We'll see if being me can get us past it."

"I'm in your hands, Harry."

Harry gave her a confused look and was rewarded with one of her girlhood, airy smiles. '_I know something you don't know,'_ that smile said, and said it sadly.

Within the chamber, the bones of the basilisk had faired poorly over the long decades, exposed to air and water. The enormous skeleton had collapsed in on itself, withered and, for the most part, drifted away down the warrens of sewers and drains.

On the far wall pulsed a shield of translucent golden light, a net curtain dotted with swimming sparks. Beyond that, lit by the tangled warding, an obvious set of steps disappeared down into depths unknown. Harry and Luna crossed the Chamber of Secrets and approached the shielded stairs. Luna glanced briefly at the enormous edifice of Salazar Slytherin and wrinkled her nose.

"Too cross," she muttered. "Too cross by far."

Harry instinctively kept Luna behind him as they reached the netted shield, and Luna let herself be instinctively kept. For a long minute, then another, Harry tilted his ear toward the curtain, listening for something missing, and then grunted.

"What is it?" Luna whispered. The only sound apart from her voice, and the thudding of her heart, was the trickle of drain water. Her leather shoes were soaked, her stockinged feet squelching in her ankle boots. "You look… unhappy."

Harry cursed. "More annoyed." He reached out a hand and plunged it into the twisted and congealed collapse of wards shielding the steps beyond. Luna gasped and took a step back, as if expecting him to burst into flame. "Bloody Malfoy was bloody right."

Harry made a complex, seemingly random mix of movements with his fingers, as if he were tying his shoelace with one hand. In a way, he was doing the opposite—unmaking a complicated knot. In the space of ten seconds the golden shield bowed inwards and then _snapped_ with a great echoing crack, before dispelling entirely.

Harry shook his hand as he withdrew it from the air, and smoke rose in lazy tendrils from his fingers. "Ouch."

"Are you alright?" Luna asked.

"I'm fine."

"How did you do that?"

Harry shrugged a shoulder. "I could sort of… hear the problem, if that makes sense."

"It does not."

"No. Shall we?"

Harry and Luna crossed the ward threshold and entered yet another part of Hogwarts that had sat unknown and unfound for long centuries curving past a whole millennium.

* * *

Distinct from the Chamber of Secrets, the steps and the walls of the tunnel were dry, dusty stone. Intricate patterns, swirls and loops like fingerprints, had been carved into the walls. Harry and Luna, wands alight, followed the patterns, as they headed down.

The steps, one after the other, took five minutes to descend, and Harry gave up count somewhere in the low two-hundreds. He wasn't looking forward to hauling his old knees back up the flight. As he and Luna set foot on the bottom step, the patterns on the walls flared to life—bright cords of neon-blue light ran like liquid metal along the slow loops and spirals, casting the corridor ahead in a pale luminescence.

"Pretty," Luna said.

Harry agreed. "Mind the floor for pressure steps or ward runes," he said. "I'm getting a strong 'protected tomb' vibe. In the absence of a decent Curse-Breaker, I'll go first."

As best Harry could tell, the corridor—about ten feet wide by the same high—shot ahead as straight as an arrow. He saw no curves in the fingerprint-light walls ahead, though faux-light could be tricksome. He kept his wand at the ready and proceeded with care along the corridor, tasting air as stale as week-old bread.

"How far below the castle do you think we are?" Luna asked.

"A good quarter mile or more. I wonder what's down this far."

"Something old." Luna traced her fingers along the walls. "I don't think anyone has been down here in a very long time."

Perhaps five minutes later a square of whiter light came into focus at the end of the corridor. Harry and Luna approached cautiously, and stepped into a larger space, cathedral-like, a massive dome overhead painted with a skill and vibrancy that would put the Sistine Chapel to shame.

The fresco depicted four familiar witches and wizards, standing resplendent in medieval garb, looking over a familiar valley. Other scenes blended with the Founders of Hogwarts, Hogsmeade in its infancy, an army of centaurs bounding from the forest with arrows knocked, being pushed back by Godric Gryffindor standing side-by-side with Salazar Slytherin, working immense magic. From there the fresco turned to a night sky, and as Harry and Luna watched the paint began to move, swirl, and catch the eye, blend into a castle…

He pulled his gaze away from the ceiling and beheld the rest of the cathedral—though he swiftly realised what the space really was. Four ornate sarcophagi, marble on stone, rested on four plinths in a neat and tidy row in the centre of the tomb.

"Are they who I think they are?" Luna whispered.

Great obsidian pillars and stained-glass windows backlit by the eerie blue light from the corridors surrounded the rotund tomb. As the painting shifted overhead, night sky became day, and beams of paint-light, as deft a brush as any of the masters, cast the tomb in an imitation of dawn-through-cloud.

"I think that's a safer bet as any."

"The Tomb of the Founders," Luna mused. "A legend, a myth…" She glanced at Harry.

"Legend has it that Slytherin never returned to Hogwarts, after he fell out with Gryffindor." Harry stroked his beard in thought. "I'd wager he returned just once. Look."

Harry and Luna's footsteps echoed throughout the vast tomb as they crossed to the ornate marble coffins. Closer now, Harry saw each marble sarcophagus was uniform in size, though differed in colour. Bands of ruby crossed the far left one, blue sapphire the next, a deep yellow sapphire the third, and on the far right—more intricate than the others—a sarcophagus patterned with rich green emerald.

Behind the emerald sarcophagus stood a stone sentinel, seven feet high, carved in the likeness of a man with a flow of shoulder-length hair, a severe brow, a braided beard, and narrow, noble eyes. The statue had been carved to display heavy breeches and a collared robe with a plunging neck, revealing a strong chest. A stone wand was looped around the statue's gem-laden belt on the right. A long, curved sword hung from the statue's other hip.

"Severe looking fellow," Luna said. "Slytherin?"

"Who else?" Harry stared Voldemort's ancestor square in his stone eyes and cursed. "Come on, looks like there's more corridor beyond these coffins, on the north wall there. Let's keep moving."

Harry and Luna stepped between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff's earthly remains and, as they crossed the very centre of the tomb, a sharp, snapping _hiss_, much like a snake, echoed throughout the space.

"Ah, hell," Harry muttered. He grasped Luna's hand and pulled her away from the sarcophagi.

Overhead, the painted sky darkened and cracked lightning, almost cartoonish in paint. The sky rumbled thunder, which shook the stone beneath their feet, and the delicate patterns of gemstones on the caskets began to shine in their respective colours.

From the caskets rose the four ghosts of the Founders of Hogwarts, as severe in death as they were in life, and Harry noticed with dismay that they weren't pale grey and see-through, like all the other castle ghosts, but more defined, clearer—and cast in a pall of deathly green, like the poor bastards he'd seen in the Archives' mausoleum. Yellow sick-flame licked at their skin, and their eyes were missing, bleeding black blood down the malignant green faces.

"Merlin," Luna breathed. "What are they?"

"Souls of the dead," Harry quoted the Caretaker. "Unable to move on. Luna, they're true-ghosts, not mere imprints. You're looking at what's left of the four founders of Hogwarts."

A tall man, Gryffindor floated above his casket in garb similar to the statue protecting Slytherin's tomb. He wore a close-cut beard, and on his belt his sheath sat empty—missing his famous sword. Next to him, Rowena Ravenclaw had been buried in a dress of spun silk, a complicated garment that flowed in gentle waves. Her hair was loose, covering her shoulders. She held a thick tome of some ancient and likely forgotten magic in her hands. Helga Hufflepuff, shorter than her fellow witches and wizards, spun her wand in lazy circles, and it was a real wand, no ghostly spectre, casting yellow bands of light formed into butterflies, which took flight around her head of tall curls. She smiled.

Salazar Slytherin bared his teeth and thrust his arms forward at Harry and Luna, in a gesture that could only be interpreted in one way—anger. The statue he'd left to guard his sarcophagus in death resembled him well.

"Harry," Luna whispered, grasping his upper arm, "I would quite like you do something."

Harry cast her a look over his shoulder and smiled wryly. He stepped forward, palms raised. "Eh, howdy—"

Slytherin's ghost stepped from his sarcophagus and _into_ the resplendent and tall statue of himself. He disappeared. For a moment, nothing happened, and then the statue's eyes began to shine with an emerald-green light.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding…" Harry muttered, as the statue's head turned to stare at him and Luna both, and its—his—stone arms moved and drew the wand from his belt.

Harry glanced at the other three founders, who seemed more interested in what their fourth was up to than pestering the living amongst their presence.

The statue of Salazar Slytherin shook the floor as he took his first steps in the best part of a thousand years. Possessed of his soul, his earth-locked spirit, Slytherin stepped into the space opposite Harry at exactly twenty paces and raised his wand in front of his stony face.

"I think he wants to duel you," Luna said. "Um, good luck."

Harry muttered something below his breath and gestured to the other three spirits. "You lot going to let him get away with this?" He paused. "You let him get away with a lot, didn't you? Why stop him now?"

Harry raised his wand in front of his face. As Slytherin bowed, Harry dispensed with formality and struck first. "_Confringo!_"

The blasting curse erupted from his wand in fiery orange light. It struck the possessed statue with all the force Harry could muster and… knocked the founder back about half a step.

"Shit," Harry muttered, as Slytherin's stone lips grinned and, moving with a speed that belied his form, silently cast a curse of green death light.

Already moving, his decades of Auror experience kicking in, Harry fell ass backwards and felt the cold curse light pass a hair's breadth over his head. His tailbone struck the tomb floor with a jolt of pain that shot up his spine.

"_Expelliarmus_!" Luna cried.

Slytherin knocked the charm aside with a sneer, but it gave Harry time to gain his feet. He circled one way, the statue the other, while the other three spectres watched on—save Hufflepuff, who seemed far more interested in conjuring illusory creatures.

Harry cast another blasting curse, this one at the statue's feet, and was rewarded with a plume of dust and shattered marble. Slytherin stumbled to one knee, his long sword scraping the floor.

Not letting up, Harry followed with a stream of high-pressure water, compressed enough to strip flesh from bone. The jet of water hit Slytherin in the chest and, for a moment, looked like it may tip the statue, but he weathered the deluge, arm raised, and stood.

Stepping forward, Luna cast a smokescreen between Harry and Slytherin, his glowing green eyes barely visible, menacing, in the thick grey smoke. "Any ideas?" she asked.

An arc of crimson light shot through the smoke. Harry stepped right, Luna left, and the crescent of hot magic shot between them and struck a distant pillar, carving a neat slab from the marble like a knife biting through butter.

Another arc followed, and a third, Slytherin taking wild shots through the smoke, which started to dissipate.

"He's been dead a thousand years," Harry said. "That statue was built with old protections. We need modern spells. Modern magic. What have you got?"

Luna bit her lip and her eyes lit up. "_Expecto Patronum!_"

"That's not modern!" Harry exclaimed, as a large, bounding hare of silver form and radiant light burst from Luna's wand and dashed through the air, cutting into the smoke.

"No," she said, "but this is. _Patronum Munivit!_"

Slytherin dispelled the cloud of smoke with a gust of air and bellowed deep within his rumbling stone throat. He stepped forward, emerging from the remnant smoke, and levelled his wand at Harry.

Luna's patronus… hardened, became silver-steel over silver light, and with a tremendous ring of metal striking stone, hurtled into Slytherin's chest and exploded in a firework of sparks and spilt molten magic.

The statue staggered back and roared in anger. A heavy black scorch mark, the stone ignited, covered his chest.

"Nice," Harry said. He wracked his brain for something modern and shrugged. "_Sectumsempra!_"

Snape's old spell, once used in horrific anger against Draco Malfoy, cut deep gouges into Slytherin's stone chest, and the statue began to bleed raw magic.

Bellowing now, Slytherin leapt toward Harry and Luna, arm held high, and a torrent of liquid flame erupted from his wand, taking the form of a familiar giant snake. The snake sucked the air from the tomb, twenty feet and growing, feeding its fires, and a wave of heat struck Harry and Luna. Wincing against the glare, Harry pointed his wand at Slytherin's sarcophagus and shielded his eyes.

Silently, he cast a powerful levitating charm and _tore_ the lid from Slytherin's sarcophagus, half a tonne of marble gemstone, and launched it across the tomb and into the statue.

The marble slab floored the statue, a rumbling echo lost in the fiery hiss of the giant fire-basilisk, and Slytherin disappeared under the weight of the casket lid.

Cut off from Slytherin's wand, the snake flipped in the air, curving back on itself, and opened its maw to devour Harry and Luna where they stood.

Taking her hand, Harry and Luna pointed their wands skyward and twin blue shields domed over their heads, merging into one another, increasing the strength of their individual shields by an order of magnitude.

Long, fiery fangs fell upon the shield and shattered against the dome. The force of the impact drove Harry and Luna into one another, pressing them close together, and the fire-basilisk reared away, spitting and hissing flame.

The temperature in the tomb was approaching boiling point. Across the floor, the heavy casket lid began to heave, and a statue arm appeared from beneath the marble.

Harry glanced at Luna. "Run," he said. "We make for whatever is through those doors."

Luna didn't argue. Together they took off across the tomb, dodging a tail whip of flame from the conjured basilisk, and made for the large doors that most likely led, Harry thought, to greater and more dangerous horrors.

They dashed into the alcove, clear across the tomb, as Slytherin leapt to his feet, casting the casket lid aside, and raised his wand to regain control of the fire-basilisk.

Harry turned on the spot as Luna worked magic on the large, rusted cast-iron handle stuck against them. He spun his wand like a gunslinger and, mustering long decades of magical training, conjured a fire demon of his own.

He thrust his arm toward Slytherin's basilisk and, without uttering a word, a brilliant golden light erupted from his wand. The beam shot across the tomb and, just as it reached the fire-basilisk, took form.

Talons, a five-metre wingspan, and a sharp, golden beak.

Harry's phoenix tore into the fire-basilisk and a rain of hot, burning magic splashed against the floor of the tomb, melting marble like slag and turning the space into an inferno. The ghosts of the founders watched the spectacle. Hufflepuff twirled on the spot, Ravenclaw clapped politely and, as Harry heard the old doors swing open on rusted hinges behind him, he wagered he caught a nod of respect from Godric Gryffindor.

Then he and Luna were dashing down another corridor—almost faster than the intricate patterns of blue light carved into the walls could keep up with them. Back in the tomb, Slytherin roared and heavy, earth-shaking footsteps followed in their wake.

"Merlin, the bastard is still coming," Harry breathed.

"We shouldn't run blindly ahead," Luna said, and pulled him to a stop. "Traps and wards, you said."

Harry reluctantly nodded. "You're right. As quick as we can, though."

In a hurried walk now, Harry kept glancing over his shoulder, trusting Luna to watch the path ahead. He cast minor shields and other annoyances behind him to hopefully slow the Slytherin statue down.

"What do you think's ahead now?" Luna asked.

"Something final," Harry replied with a long sigh. "And a likely dead end."

Luna _tsk_ed. "Don't be so defeatist."

Harry resisted rolling his eyes, but something in his face must have given him away.

"You've been depressed lately, I take it," Luna said.

Harry paused. "You want to talk about this now?" Luna gave him a certain look. "Fine. Yes, I take it I have."

"Not sleeping. Drinking too much."

"All the clichés, yes." He dragged his hand across the glowing patterns on the wall as they hurried down the corridor. Ahead, he caught a whiff of something stagnant, of decay—rot. "It's sometimes easier to live indifferently, you know. Painless. The drink can do that, if you let it. A whole world of indifference at the bottom of every bottle."

Luna squeezed his arm. "Yes, well, be that as it may, I'd thought you'd learned the difference between what's right and what's easy a long time ago." She smiled kindly. "I'm sure Ginny and your children would appreciate a touch less indifference."

That gave Harry pause—and memories of half-moon spectacles. _And remember, Harry, whatever happens, you're never alone._ For a moment, he felt like a kid again, uncertain and scared. The feeling wasn't much different, he realised, than how he'd been feeling lately.

"You were my last best hope to cure the Mage's Ruin." Luna sighed, frustrated. "You know, most of your life, Harry, looks like a fantastic, magical story to those of us on the outside. To us… secondary characters. I guess I forgot, or rather hoped, that you weren't just as human as the rest of us. I wanted you to be the story book hero. That was selfish, of course." She caressed her neck, the sickly scar lines eating her alive just beneath the silk scarf.

"It's not selfish to want to live," Harry said softly, pulling her to a stop. There was no sign of Slytherin following them… yet.

"No? If the Master of Death in all his terrible glory is out of suggestions, then I think I'm allowed a moment of selfish pity, Harry Potter." She folded her arms over her breasts and turned away from him, eyeing the corridor ahead.

Harry stood a little straighter and, gently, placed a hand on Luna's shoulder, asking her to face him. With a moment of reluctance, she did.

"I didn't become the Master of Death by fighting the inevitable, Luna." Long ago memories of green curse light in the forest flashed through his mind. "I had to accept that inevitability. I had to… well, I had to die."

"I've still so much I want to do and see…" she whispered.

"I was gifted a glimpse of the world beyond this one," Harry said. "The waystation to that world, anyway. If we are stories, then yours doesn't end here. You'll have to trust me on that, I know, with the understanding that there are far, far worse things in the living world than in the dying."

Luna embraced him, a solid hug that squeezed Harry's tired old bones, and was, of course, two parts farewell for every part comfort.

"Shall we be about saving the castle then?" she asked and walked ahead so Harry wouldn't see her cry.

The corridor ended in a cave-like structure, roughly round, about twenty feet high, slick and wet and reeking of death.

In the centre of the cave, a large pit of boiling and swirling purple ichor hissed and bubbled, as if all the ruined potions ever mis-brewed in Slughorn's and Snape's classrooms over the years had been poured into one giant cauldron. Great veins of the purple ichor, the stuff eating away at Hogwarts, ran _upwards_ in rivulets along the walls, disappearing into the stone roof of the cave and, undoubtedly, gnawing and biting their way up and into the castle.

This pit was the source of Hogwarts' malaise—the cancer destroying the school.

In the centre of the pit rose a twisted pillar, atop of which sat something familiar to Harry. As they reached the pit's edge, staring over into the purple abyss, they looked down on the pillar, which leaned about three feet out of the lake of rot.

Whatever the purple substance was—death, disease, decay—it had slowly been eroding the pillar, and would soon claim it entirely.

"What is that?" Luna asked, pointing to the object atop of the pillar. "It seems… kind."

Harry exhaled slowly. "That," he said, "is a Seed of Life."

And indeed it was—the very same that the Caretaker had shown Harry deep within the Department of Mysteries' Archives. The pool of inert, dead seeds below London looked just like the orb atop of the pillar deep below Hogwarts—with one important difference.

The one below Hogwarts wasn't dead. It shone even now with a faint, white radiance, a single spark buried within the glassy depths, clinging to life. A tremendous sense of… _right_, emanated from the seed, as if all the good in the world had been condensed into a single place.

"It's beautiful," Luna said, mesmerised. She almost stepped forward, over the edge. Harry gently caught her arm. She blinked. "How do we fix this?" she asked.

Harry stared into the bubbling pit, to the Seed of Life, and the vast veins pumping the purple ichor up and into Hogwarts. A sinking, inevitable feeling settled in his gut. "Luna, I'm not sure we're meant—"

"None of that," she said and pointed her wand at the seed. "Hmm… _Accio Seed!_" The glowing orb didn't budge. "_Wingardium Leviosa!_"

Not a wobble.

"Now that's odd," she said. "Harry, I think—"

Like wraiths, three of the four founders appeared at the edges of the pit, one at each point of the compass, if Harry and Luna stood at the south point. Harry marked their faces, frowned, and his eyes widened. He spun, pushing Luna aside, as a razor-sharp blade cut through the air where they'd been standing and sliced into the rock on the edge of the pit.

Salazar Slytherin had dispensed with his wand for now and had drawn the archaic blade at his stone belt. The statue looked a little worse for wear, scorched and cracked, bleeding magic, but the eyes remained hard flints of emerald radiating hatred.

Harry swung his wand arm around but Slytherin was faster, his free hand grasping Harry's wrist and _squeezing_. With no visible effort at all, Slytherin bent Harry's hand backwards and shattered the bones in his wrist.

Harry screamed.

His wand dropped.

Slytherin smirked and brought his sword up and over his head—the blade gleamed purple, reflecting the rot and decay in the pit.

Harry bared his teeth in a vicious grin, tears in his eyes, and laughed.

Luna threw herself across his chest, wand raised. "_Expecto Patronum!_' she cried. _"Patronum Munivit!_"

Luna's steel patronus swam across Harry's vision and slammed into Slytherin once again, knocking the statue back. Slytherin bellowed, echoing across the cave, shaking loose centuries of dust, and teetered on the edge of the pit, his heels hanging in the air above the bubbling cauldron below.

The statue waved its arms, as if trying to fly. Slytherin dropped his sword and it disappeared into the boiling mess of purple rot. He wavered on the edge, at the tipping point, and—

Luna stood. "Just _fall_!" she cried and pointed her wand at his chest. "_Confrin_—"

Slytherin sneered and in that moment Harry saw his mind.

"_NO!_"

Slytherin's arm snatched at Luna's wrist, as he had done to Harry, dancing on the edge of that pit. He made to pull himself forward, to save himself, using Luna as ballast.

Luna hurled herself into the statue instead, and though she weighed not much more than a galleon and change, her weight was the needed leverage to push the statue into the poisonous pit.

Salazar Slytherin dragged Luna with him over the edge. They disappeared from Harry's view.

The statue hit the purple ichor and splashed the mess into the air. Some of the drops landed on Harry, burning his clothes, scorching his hands and cheeks as if cigars had been put out on his skin. He staggered to his knees, on to one foot, as Luna began to scream.

"No…" he said, near-whimpered, reaching for his wand which had rolled away about six feet. Harry lunged toward the wand—uncertain what he would do, only that he would _save his friend_.

From her place atop of Slytherin, Luna had been spared an initial drowning in the corrosive purple ichor. Though as the statue sank, already being eaten away—ancient, green eyes rolling madly in Slytherin's stone head—her knees and feet sank into the mess.

Luna screamed. Her clothes ignited with purple flame, licks of the harsh light running up the back of her stockings to her skirt.

She stood, cast Harry a single, defiant smile, and then jumped from Slytherin's chest—not toward the edge of the pit, to possible safety, but further in toward the twisted pillar that held the Seed of Life.

Luna struck the pillar, dazed but determined, as purple flame crawled up her back and set her hair afire. Screaming truly now, high and piercing, she latched her arms around the Seed of Life and lifted it from its pedestal.

As Harry watched, helpless, already too late, Luna turned a final time and, as if it weighed no more than a pebble, tossed the orb across the pit and onto the cave floor near Harry. The seed struck, light flaring within, and rang once, twice, before it rolled out of sight.

Harry had his wand and he pointed it at Luna, but words, time, magic failed him.

Luna met his gaze, blew him a kiss, her lovely blonde hair now a crown of flame. She fell back into the purple ichor and died.

* * *

The grim souls of the four founders of Hogwarts stood at the four points of the compass on the pit, for Slytherin had returned to the ranks with his fellow founders. The ghost had calmed, face slack, defeated, and no curse, no hell, was good enough for the man on this or any side of the veil.

Harry kneeled off to the side, staring into the pit at where Luna had fallen for a long minute. He kept hoping for her to emerge, but of course she was gone.

The Seed of Life, that single spark within its depths almost mocking, rested in a nook of cave rock on his left. Again, he felt a sense of overwhelming calm, of _rightness_, with the orb—as if it were a talisman for good, a light against the dark.

It was clear what was expected of him.

Harry hesitated, then shrugged. He placed the palm of his left hand flat against the orb. Light exploded throughout the cave, his hair flew back from his head, and his robes billowed as if caught in storm-gust.

The light faded and _understanding _flowed through Harry's mind. A thousand and more years of understanding.

The seed poured the past into his mind. The cave and pit shifted, disappeared, and a hazy, somewhat dull version of reality akin to the memories seen in a pensieve melted into place. He stood on a vast ridge, looking down on a familiar valley, a wide lake, and a forest even more forbidden than the remnant that surrounded Hogwarts to this day. Still, he would recognise the land anywhere—he was looking at the castle grounds as they had existed _before_ there was a castle. Just untamed Scottish wilderness.

Clouds swam overhead, increasing their pace, the sun rose and fell, stars blossomed, the moon waxed, and the cycle repeated. Harry got it—time was passing.

After months or weeks or years, he didn't know, the scene changed, and he witnessed the arrival of a magical carriage-train burdened with supplies, pulled by three dozen thestrals, land in a clear spit of the valley. From the carriage emerged the Founders of Hogwarts—Slytherin and Gryffindor as proud in life as they were in death. Between them they carried, without magical aid, a large cast-iron chest. Harry wagered every galleon in his vault he knew what was in that chest. Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff followed them along the valley, laughing and joking, sharing wine sipped from fine crystal goblets.

The story slowed. Together, the founders worked the latches on the chest and light spilled across the valley from the white-blue Seed of Life. If he'd thought the seed bright in the cave below the castle, it was nothing compared to how bright the damn thing shone in memory. The orb today was a match struck against the full blaze of a bonfire, though perhaps it could be coaxed back to life again...

He knew what happened next. As one, the founders lifted the seed from the chest and _plunged _it against the green, fertile grounds of the valley.

A pure ring, the strike of a bell on a clear, still morning, echoed across the valley, rippled across the waters of the lake, and swayed the branches of the forest. The ring was… intimately familiar to Harry, and he realised with a start that he had been hearing it his whole life—every time he was at Hogwarts. From his first day at age eleven all those years ago to every visit since, save the last few days, and that was what had been amiss with the castle. What had felt so wrong.

The ring had been there across all the long years and had finally faded.

Harry wept, knowing without knowing, that Hogwarts wasn't dying but had died. The purple ichor would claim the castle. Death was not only inevitable but had occurred.

He sighed as the Seed of Life sank into the virgin earth and the memory sped up again. He smiled through his tears to see Hogwarts Castle, proud and resplendent, born from the soil. The castle had not been built over a millennium ago, no—it had grown from a work of splendid, unparalleled magic.

_Everything has its time_, Harry thought, and even after his long life and all the people he had lost, he still found that thought surprising. We lie best when we convince ourselves nothing will ever change, he knew, and when we ignore the certainty of death. _And that's a good thing_, he supposed. Though with the loss of Luna so raw, just why that was a good thing escaped him now.

The memory faded, cleared, and Harry found himself back in the awful cave, in Luna's tomb.

The four founders stood in line above the purple ichor, and as one bowed to him—even Slytherin—before the golden-yellow flame licking their skin spluttered and died. The souls went next, vibrant green fading translucent, before finally disappearing. Their long work done, the Founders of Hogwarts moved on from the world of the living.

"Good fucking riddance," Harry muttered. The bubbling pit surged as if in storm, and the heavy veins of the ichor along the walls pulsed, delivering poison up and throughout the castle.

For a moment, Harry considered just leaving the Seed of Life, to spite them all, but Luna had died for the softly glowing orb at his feet. Cursing—himself, the world, creation itself—Harry cast a silent levitation charm and began the long march back to civilisation.

* * *

Harry and Neville sat in the corner booth of the Wisely Room at The Three Broomsticks, awash in dim light and warm hearth flame, as winter howled against the windows, rattled and shook the old establishment, threatening to bury the whole world in snow and pure forget. The homely scent of spiced wine simmered over the fire, clove and cinnamon.

Two drams of whisky sat untouched between them on the worn old table.

Harry rested his wrist on his lap, mending and wrapped. Small spots of salve covered his burns, some of which had scorched his beard. He'd been through hell and looked it. Under the table, a heavy cast-iron chest, latched and locked, went unnoticed.

Neville sighed and took up his glass. Harry did the same. "To Luna," the headmaster of a dead school said, a whisper that carried only to Harry. "I loved you, dear."

Harry echoed the toast.

Crystal tumblers set back on the table, the bottle of whisky hiding in the shadows levitated itself over and poured two fresh fingers of something amber and aged.

"To all our friends," Harry said, "who deserved better."

Neville choked back a sob, clinked his glass with Harry's, and knocked back the whisky.

By unspoken command, the whisky bottle filled their glasses a third time.

The logs in the fire crackling away, the gentle murmur of the pub's patrons around them, Harry and Neville clinked their tumblers together.

"To Hogwarts," Neville said.

"May they all rest in peace," Harry finished.

The bottle did not try and refill their glasses a fourth time.

The old friends sat in silence for a few long, yet not uncomfortable minutes, both of them dwelling on their memories of Luna, of the castle, and latching onto the good ones with small, fleeting smiles that did little to stitch the fresh wound in their hearts.

Neville sighed and cleared his throat. "What are you going to do with this thing?" he asked and gave the iron chest under the table a kick with his boot.

Harry rolled his empty tumbler on its edge back and forth along the table, considered the question, then nodded. "Something reckless," he decided.

He stood and offered Neville his hand. Neville, bemused, stood and took it. "Merlin, what does that mean?"

Harry shrugged. "Not sure. But maybe don't get rid of those stuffy and self-important headmaster robes just yet," he said. "Goodnight, Nev."

* * *

Deep within the Scottish Highlands, the untouched and cold wilds of the east Cairngorms, Harry popped a lemon drop into his mouth and rolled the sour candy across his tongue.

From his vantage point, a cool breeze, winter's last gasp, ruffled his hair and caught the edge of his leather jacket. He stroked his beard, scratched at his chin, and considered the valley below.

A wide loch, bordered by a dark patch of pure old-world forest, followed the western arm toward some of the highest, still snow-capped peaks in Scotland. To the north, rolling green hills, and to the east, sharp and severe cliff faces leering like sentinels. The valley was a horseshoe, away from prying eyes.

Spring had come early to the valley floor—a vast carpet of wildflowers, thistles blooming amongst bluebells, reds and greens and soft blues, covered the untouched fields. Harry shifted the heavy pack over his shoulder, his last few days of supplies, as he had hiked in the Muggle way, and nodded to himself.

The trek down into the valley was pleasant. Harry took his time, searching out natural switchbacks, hopping over trickling streams, and meandered toward the valley's heart.

Around lunchtime, judging by the sun in the clear blue skies, he crested a small hill and surveyed the land around him.

"What do you think, Luna?" he asked, though in his heart he'd already made his decision. "Yes, I think so, too."

Harry shrugged out of his pack and undid the buckles. He drew his wand and, from within the pack's magically larger depths, he summoned the iron chest and settled the weight gently on the spongy, green grass.

Still taking his time, Harry unlocked the chest. The lid drew back on creaky hinges, and a spill of white, ethereal light, brighter than the noon sun, spilt across the small hill.

The Seed of Life shone pure and strong. Since removing it from the death pit below Hogwarts, the seed had only shone stronger. A spark coaxed back to life. Harry only wished that it had not taken Luna's life in the bargain.

With a reverence usually reserved for holy relics, Harry lifted the seed from the chest. He placed the glowing orb on the yielding grass and watched it sink into the earth. The white radiance of the seed faded away, leaving the grass painted silver.

Sighing for the ages, Harry collected his pack, hoisted up the chest, and moved away from the silver grass. He settled the chest back on the western crest of the hill, took a seat atop of it, popped another lemon drop into his mouth, and waited for something to be born.


End file.
